Zynga files for IPO – hopes to raise up to US$1.5bn

Social and web-gaming giant Zynga has filed for an IPO and hopes to raise up to US$1.5bn. Registration documents have just been filed with the Securities and Exchanges Commission.

According to the SEC filing, the IPO is being underwritten by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Allen & Company LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co and JP Morgan.

Zynga is the company behind popular online gaming titles FarmVille, Empires & Allies and Mafia Wars.

The filing quotes statistics that says Zynga is active in 166 countries, that 38,000 virtual items are created every second, that there are 60m active daily users, 232m active monthly users, 2bn minutes of play per day and 4bn neighbour connections.

The IPO is expected to happen in the early autumn and the company wants to raise between US$1.5bn and US$2bn based on a US$20bn valuation.

The filing says Zynga has received bookings in excess of US$1.5bn since it founded in 2007.

Zynga employs 2,000 people worldwide, including more than 55 workers in Dublin.

The filing also explains the company’s financial relationship with Facebook: “In July 2010, we began migrating to Facebook Credits as the primary payment method for our games played through Facebook, and by April 2011, we had completed this migration. Facebook remits to us an amount equal to 70pc of the face value of Facebook Credits purchased by our players for use in our games played through Facebook. We record bookings and recognise revenue net of the amounts retained by Facebook.”